Printing to scale

Hi people I'm very new to Autocad been using it at work to read drawings so I thought I would draw my own plans for my extension. So far so good till I get to printing them out to scale!. I set the paper size then when i try choose the scale it alls goes crazy!. I've read loads and watched loads videos about how to print to scale but I'm still getting no luck! Scale does not work correct!. Ive attached my drawings.

Please help

Thanks Neil

Heath10.dwg

Ok, first off, welcome to the forum. Now for the bad news. It seems you have committed a cardinal sin in the world of CAD. You've drawn your floorplan at a scale instead of drawing full size 1:1. You should ALWAYS draw full size in Autocad. This is why your plot scale does not work correctly. Your drawing is already scaled. Your Units are set to millimeter but they should have been set to meter.

I'm not sure what to tell you except to scale your drawing up in model space so that it is at actual size. Then you will be able to set your plot scale correctly in paper space for printing.

EDIT: I am going to have to pull out of this. I start a brand new full time position in 10 hours. It's 10:21 PM here in Florida and I need some sleep. I have found some sort of anomaly in the drawing that I can't get a handle on, and probably won't have time for it tomorrow either. There will be help coming in short order. Be patient someone will pop in, hopefully on your time schedule.

I am not so sure the drawing is intentionally scaled in modelspace.

I think it was drawn in what neilg81 thought were meters, but are actually inches. The dwg units are inches, and the 15.25 dimension for the length of the plan on the long side (red) measure out to 15 1/4 inches. Also 15.25 meters seems to be a reasonable size for a residence of this type.

@neilg81

Since the drawing units (not the UNITS command) are inches, and the insertion scale units are set to millimeters, there seems to be some confusion over how to make sure the drawing units are what you want them to be. The UNITS you can manipulate with the UNITS command are only the insertion scale units, not the drawing units. The rest of the selections on the UNITS dialog only have to do with how the UNITS, whatever they are, are displayed when dimensioning.

I do think AutoDesk could do us all a favor and clear that confusion up a little by making this more clear. Apparently they think everyone in the USA knows to open the acad.dwt file (Imperial template defaulted to inches) to start their first ever drawing in AutoCad, and that the rest of the world knows to use the acadiso.dwt (Metric template defaulted to millimeters) for the same purpose. Nothing apparently, could be further from the truth.

(You know why we still use the Imperial system of measurement? So english bullets won't fit in our rifles, should you all choose to invade, capture our weapons and force us to use the metric system. Simple when you think about it.):rofl:

We would be able to give you step by step instructions and a command or two to fix it, which would take all of maybe 5 minutes, but there are objects on some layers that are turned OFF that are drawn at a completely different scale. This makes it impossible to have AutoCad automatically fix it, since it cannot rescale objects drawn at two different scales at once. It is still repairable, but it is more difficult.

Whats more, the object that appears to be a plan view stair on those OFF layers, is dimensioned in a way that makes it difficult to figure out what scale it was drawn to. The dimensions on that group of objects are manually drawn with independent text objects, that's right they are drawn in, not just exploded dimensions. The text dimensions do not match the measured number of units (inches) either.

I can guess that the stair was drawn in millimeters and manually dimensioned, then copied into this drawing that has inches for units, simply because it is more than 1000 times larger than the floor plans. I could be wrong on that.

We can get you to a resolution, but first we need to know a few things.

1. Can you turn the OFF layers ON and simply erase that stair plan?
   
2. Had you intended to be drawing in meters?
   
3. Do you know how to open a blank drawing using a template, a dwt file rather than a dwg file?
   
4. Do you really want to plot to 8 1/2 inch x 11 inch paper?
   

Drawing2.dwg

there you go, iv'e added an A1 template, model space now in Meters.

I also added a dynamic scale bar in paper space.

you view is now 1:100

Well that would be very nice, but you have only set the insertion units to meters, not the drawing units, which have now been set to millimeters. Modelspace is now in millimeters, not meters.

Neilg81 is a self admitted noob, who still does not know how to get their own chestnuts out of the fire. The drawing you posted is in this instance a bit counterproductive.

One needs to learn to use the world wide convention and draw in modelspace at full size (1:1). The drawing2.dwg floor plan is 1000 times smaller than neilg81's apparently intended meters, at 15.25mm along the "Y" axis. The paperspace layout is 1:100 which means 1 paperspace millimeter equals 100 modelspace millimeters. For a drawing in meters, the paperspace scale will have to have the large number on the left of the colon, or how many millimeters equals one meter.

Do yourself a favor and look up the command -dwgunits, the hyphen is required.

Like Gazza Architectural in Australia is drawn in mm so I would rescale x 1000, Then in layout draw a box reflecting the size of your sheet for A3 thats 420x297 then do a Mview inside and set your scale, you are very close to something that is simply workable.

Im only trying to help but busy at work, i'll leave it to the experts...

Hi people I'm very new to Autocad been using it at work to read drawings so I thought I would draw my own plans for my extension. So far so good till I get to printing them out to scale!. I set the paper size then when i try choose the scale it alls goes crazy!. I've read loads and watched loads videos about how to print to scale but I'm still getting no luck! Scale does not work correct!. Ive attached my drawings.

 

Please help

Thanks Neil

I have attached a FIX. It also has a couple of layouts set up.

An A0 in paperspace millimeters, at 10:1 scale, 10mm = 1 meter.

an 8 1/2" x 11" in paperspace millimeters at 10:1 scale, 10mm = 1 meter

and an 8 1/2" x 11" in paperspace inches at 1:16, 1" = 16 meters just to show how much fun viewport scales are.

At this point I'd suggest again to look into why you want to draw in meters. A good deal of the parts of a house are an extremely small fraction of a meter.

How I fixed it:

First, I turned on the OFF layers, and erased the giant stair.

Then I ran the command -DWGUNITS, and followed the prompts (the second time, correctly:oops:).

Here is a list of the command's prompts, and responses.

Command: -DWGUNITS

Loading AEC Base...

Loading AEC Base Extended...

Loading AEC Core...

Drawing units:

1. Inches

2. Feet

3. Millimeters

4. Centimeters

5. Decimeters

6. Meters

Unit for length 6

Drawing unit display formats:

1. Scientific

2. Decimal

Linear display format : 2

Linear display precision : 2

Scale objects from other drawings upon insert? [Yes/No] : YES

Match INSUNITS to drawing units? [Yes/No] : Yes

** WARNING: you have changed the unit for this drawing database. **

** All new objects will be drawn according to the new unit, but **

** existing objects will not change size unless you specifically **

** ask to have automatic scaling occur. **

Scale objects in current drawing to reflect change in units? [Yes/No] : NO (This is where I answered YES incorrectly, for the second time in about a week. See, I don't use this command much at all, I draw in the correct units in the first place.)

Command: Heath10 units changed.dwg

(You know why we still use the Imperial system of measurement? So english bullets won't fit in our rifles, should you all choose to invade, capture our weapons and force us to use the metric system. Simple when you think about it.):rofl:

Do you know why we don't care, when we run out of bullets, we can use yours, your just left with a big stick

Some of the previous replies were quite curious. When I opened the drawing, the dimensions matched the lengths being dimensioned. So the drawing was drawn in drawing units that were meant to represent one metre.

However, the drawing was started on an Imperial template, which means that when you are trying to scale for plotting, you have to cope with the metric conversion factor (25.4 or reciprocal) and the fact that there are 1000 millimetres in a metre.

AutoCAD plots in millimetres, and there are all sorts of buttons to push, so that you can automagically convert anything into everything. Incidentally, I had heard that the USA was considering changing to the metric system, but they were doing it inch by inch.

But to plotting. What size paper were you going to plot on and to what scale?

If you choose, say, an A4 at 1 to 100, you have to remember that your plotting units are millimetres and your drawing units are metres. So the AutoCAD requirement is drawing units in millimetres divided by scale. In this case would be 1000 / 100. You can enter it like that in the custom scale, and you should end up with something like this.

Dana

By the way congratulations on the new job, I hope your first day goes well,

Can I offer a counter argument to your description, it's well written and well thought out but totally wrong the results are good but the logic is flawed.

The OP's drawing needs to be scaled at 1:100 that's how metric scale rules are made.

The biggest problem always appears to be, not the scale but the misconception of the language, Autocad only knows 2 units, inches and millimeters. When you open a new drawing and draw a line 10 units long, then goto the first layout and highlight the viewport and use the scale drop down and select 1:1, if you have done nothing else, then when you print the drawing, you will have a piece of paper with a line on it either 10" or 10mm depending on wether you have acad.dwt or acadiso.dwt as your standard template. Go to print anything and in the print dialogue box the scale option will allow you to pick 1 mm= however many drawing units, or 1 inch= however many drawing units. You can use any settings you want in -dwgunits, paperspace remains as millimeters or inches.

It is common practise in Europe at least to measure and draw in either millimeters, meters, centimeters and even decimeters, so our 10mm long line can be written down and drawn as 10, 0.01, 1 or 0.1 those are full units and it is recomended that you always draw in full units, but three of those are drawn to scale. Full units, full size, full scale and 1:1 are not the same, but all to often that is how they are used in a sentence. The standard scale list in Autocad is setup to work with a unit in model space being either 1 mm or 1 inch, if you change the units in a drawing then 1:1 in paper space will still use 1 mm (or 1 inch) = 1 drawing unit.

As Dana pointed out the OP has used an imperial template and then used his site measurement of meters to draw in model space. I don't know if anyone spotted it but the OP did alter the first layout to use A3 paper but incorrectly applied a scale of 1:10 to the paper in the page setup manager. For an A3 size of paper the correct scale to use for this drawing is 1:100. 1 unit on the paper is the equivalent of 100 units on the ground. And it doesn't make a difference what you use to measure with. All the OP needs to do in order to print correctly is alter the scale list. So altering the 1:100 scale to show 1 paper unit equals .1 drawing units or 10 paper units = 1 drawing unit is the correct method, the scale isn't 1/10 it is 1mm = 100mm and 100mm is written 0.1 thats not 1:10 (In my opinion - but I suppose that is open to discussion). To highlight the issue I also included a detail at 1:1 in the layout, and to do that when using meters as your survey units the scale has to be set as 1 paper unit = .001 drawing units (or even 1000 paper units = 1 drawing unit - still open to variations and discussion).

Heath10.dwg

neilg: A bit of advice. If you intend to work with metric units do yourself a favor and start with a metric template file. Example: acadiso.dwt The first time you use AutoCAD this MUST be a conscious choice because being an American company the default template file. acad.dwt, is set to use decimal inches. Once you've made the right choice you will always be given the option to use a metric template from then on. And as a reminder when drawing in model space always draw your objects FULL size no matter if you are drawing a paperclip or the floorplan for Buckingham Palace. Good luck and welcome to the CADTutor forum.

ReMark I'm not nit-picking, just want to understand how things are done in your end of the world. Site measurements are quite normally done here in one of three variations, millimeters, centimeters or meters, so what you would call a 3 foot door, is as standard 930mm, but different people here would measure that as 930 93 or 0.93 and would draw that as such, and say it was full size, I personally dont see 0.93 units as full size (but it is certainly in full units). When you are getting survey data is it normal to enter 3 feet as 3 units or does everyone use 3' which automatically draws 36 units, and is it even possible to enter a measurement of 3 yards into Autocad without first mentally converting to 9 feet or 108 inches?

STEVEN-G as I posted earlier if metric architectural is normally mm and civil design is in Metres here in AUS, pretty simple to work with. The best hint I can give is draw the plot sheet at 1:1 scale in a layout create a mview inside, zoom E now easy bit if you have the viewport toolbar displayed a number will appear you can directly type a scale factor say 1:100 is 10 1:250 is 4 1:500 is 2 it will auto zoom, then lock the display so you dont change the scale.

Back to the OP you can force Autocad to start as metric or imperial very simply by changing the desktop Icon properties so that the correct profile is called. Depending on how you do the install you can tick wether to have imperial and metric icons on your desktop. In simple terms left click icon once, right click and select properties, at the end of the start up line is a /p this is followed with a metric or imperial value for CIV3D its > like wise >. Sorry I am not sure of the default one for plain autocad, just copy the Icon onto the desktop and have both ready to go.

Another hint is CONFIG, FILES and set your qnew template to acadiso.dwt this way do a NEW and correct template will be used.

steven-g: First thing I would do is switch my units to Architectural then I can enter 3' or I can enter 36 (inches). Either way works. One cannot however enter "yards". It would have to be mentally calculated.

Bigal

Sure that works, but it doesn't stop the confusion for other people, when I draw in millimeters (full siize, 1:1) and goto a layout and choose a scale of 1:100 for my viewport I can make a note in the drawing that it is 1:100, but when people use 1 unit = 1 meter, they then goto a layout and using the standard list pick a scale of 10:1 and label the drawing as 1:100, when it's plotted all is well, but it's not logical. what scale do you use to do a detail at 1:2 or 1:5.

Metric makes my head hurt.

steven-g: First thing I would do is switch my units to Architectural then I can enter 3' or I can enter 36 (inches). Either way works. One cannot however enter "yards". It would have to be mentally calculated.

Thats what I thought, although I find metric easier to work with, there is no way to do that in a metric template. When you use architectural units it basically lets you use 3' as a shortcut for 36 inches (or units). There is no shortcut to translate 1 meter to 1000 millimeters, so the line stays 1 unit. So my point is, yes thats full units but it's not full scale, and I think a lot of people don't see that difference, and wonder why 1:100 doesn't work in paper space, even if units are set to meters.

AutoCAD knows Feet-Inches set with either Architectural or Engineering Length type in Units, or any real world unit (Autodesk's words not mine), set in Length type in Units by selecting Decimal, Fractional, or Scientific. A drawing intended to be drawn in Meters is drawn to actual size. The scaling for a viewport has to be adjusted for meters rather than mm since the metric title block is typically drawn to mm.

A civil drawing done in the US will be done in feet and decimal feet with the Length type set to Decimal. A length of 3 feet will be entered as 3 in that drawing.